Page 33 of Didn't See That Coming

“I was wrong. I shouldn’t have warned you. I should’ve just addressed the cause: Jonas. He’s such an asshole, I swear.”

“He is!” I cry, relief pounding through me at the realization that here, finally, is someone who feels the same way I do.

“I’ve never liked him,” Liam says. “I’ve always kept my head down and gone along with everything he said because I thought that’s the only way to survive here.” He runs his fingers through his hair and sighs again. “But now I realize that it’s the cowardly option. I hate it. I hate pretending that everything Jonas says is great. I hate pretending that his ideas are awesome.”

I’m holding my breath, because I sense it coming, and I don’t want anything, not even breathing, to get in the way.

And then Liam says it. The beautiful words I have been longing to hear. “I fucking hate his ideas for our group project.”

My squeal is so loud that someone a few shelves away shushes me. I clamp a hand over my mouth and hiss-shout, “Yessss.”

Liam laughs. “They aresobad.”

“Sobad!”

“Like a completely unoriginal copy ofLara Croft,” Liamsays.

“Her boobs are bigger than her head,” I add.

“And the guns!”

“Don’t knock the guns. They’re ‘feminist.’ ”

I don’t realize how hard we’re both laughing until one of the librarians storms over to us and hisses, “If you two can’t be quiet, you’ll have to leave the premises.”

We apologize to her and scurry out of the library like guilty children. Outside, we double over laughing, and it feels so good. It feels like I’m waking up after a deep sleep, my dulled senses coming back to life. And when I finally straighten up and meet Liam’s eyes, I know that I’ve finally found my first real friend at Xingfa.

“So I’m sorry,” Liam says, still half laughing. “But I promise you that from now on, I’m not going to be such a coward. I’ll stand up to Jonas.”

That makes me laugh, because it sounds so dramatic. “You don’t have to.” Why did I say that? I want him to. But my instinctive reaction is to say no, because…part of me doesn’t think I’m worth standing up for.

“I do. Everyone should be doing it, actually. If everyone did it, we wouldn’t have a bullying problem. I don’t wannabe part of that problem. And you don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

My chin trembles so hard I have to bite down on my lower lip to keep from bawling. I manage a nod, not trusting myself to speak. Idon’tdeserve to be treated like that. I don’t. When did I lose sight of it? In such a short time, I’ve gone from loving myself to wanting to disappear, and it’s scary to think of how quickly it all happened. But not anymore. Now that I have an ally, I’ve got some of my fight back.

We chat easily all the way back to class, and for the first time, I don’t get a surge of terror when I see our classroom and the labelYear Eleven Purityabove it.

The first thing I hear when we go inside is Jonas’s cronies, Elon and Tristan, bitching to each other about how shitty Jonas is.

“He got owned by Angelus last night, can you freaking believe it?” Elon says.

“Uh. Seriously? A healer? What was he playing as?”

“Titanimus! He should’ve been able to one-shot Angelus, but nope. She killed him three freaking times. Our entire team was, like, Dude, what the fuck?”

I have to fight hard to hide my smile. This is glorious. Last night, after Sourdawg logged off, I stayed on, found Jonas, and this time, I killed him while playing as a healer. I don’t know if it’s clear just how humiliating this is for Jonas. Healers are designed to, well, heal. Healing characters tend to be pretty weak in terms of health and armor; they have to be well-protected by their teammates so that they can go around casting healing spells on everyone. The healer I chose, Angelus, only hasa sad little hammer as her weapon. Jonas was playing as Titanimus. There shouldn’t be any way in hell that my character could have killed his, but there you go, that’s just how crappy a player Jonas is. While he flailed in a panic, I used my tiny hammer to bludgeon his stupid head in before dancing over his fading corpse. Then I camped out at the respawn site and did it twice more before his buddies came to his aid and drove me away. Definitely something that sparks joy.

“It’s embarrassing! I think we need to—”

Elon nudges him and the two turn to look at the doorway, where Jonas has just arrived. They stop talking and give him a nod. Jonas approaches, and he’s obviously in a crappy mood. He immediately zeroes in on Elon.

“What the hell was that about last night?”

Elon glances at Tristan, who shrugs. “Uh, what do you mean?”

“You guys left me alone. Where was the team support while I was getting griefed by that fucking Dudebro troll?”

“Uh…” Elon side-eyes Tristan with obvious uneasiness. “Um, we were trying to capture the flag, which was, you know, kind of the mission? And, I mean, you were playing as Titanimus, and Dudebro was playing as Angelus. You shouldn’t have been able to be defeated by a healer, so…”

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